so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for logging contacts and chasing DX but honestly it feels more like a video game than actual radio sometimes. you just click a callsign and the software does everything. started looking at JS8Call because a few guys in my club keep talking about it and it seems like it actually lets you have a real exchange instead of just signal report and 73.

my question is whether its worth setting up a whole separate profile in WSJT or whatever — i think JS8Call is its own thing right? i run an IC-7300 into a windows laptop with a SignaLink USB and the FT8 side of things took me forever to get the audio levels right so im a little gun shy about messing with a working setup. does JS8Call use the same audio routing or do you have to reconfigure everything? also curious how active the bands actually are on JS8 because i dont want to call CQ for an hour and get nothing.

not trying to abandon FT8 entirely just want something where i can actually type a sentence to someone

JS8Call is its own standalone program, not a WSJT plugin or anything like that. but here's the thing — if your SignaLink is already dialed in for FT8 you basically just point JS8Call at the same audio devices and it works. the audio levels are similar enough that you probably wont need to touch the hardware at all. maybe tweak the TX level slightly but nothing dramatic.

activity is honestly pretty decent on 40m especially in the evenings, 20m during the day. its not wall-to-wall signals like FT8 gets during a contest weekend but theres usually enough to find someone to ragchew with. the heartbeat feature is kind of cool too — your station can auto-respond to certain queries even when youre not sitting at the keyboard. for actual back and forth conversation its way more satisfying than grinding out FT8 QSOs. i still run FT8 for DX but JS8 scratched that itch of wanting to actually communicate something.

PSK31 is still around too if you havent tried it, fldigi is pretty easy to set up and theres still some activity on 20m around 14.070. older mode but people actually type full sentences and it has a nice waterfall. just throwing that out there since you mentioned wanting real conversations. JS8 is good though agree with the above